Hardy, Casterbridge and Virginia WoolfOn this day in 1885 Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge began serialization. This was the first novel Hardy had written for weekly rather than monthly serialization; some early reviewers balked at its steady stream of drama and its "improbabilities of incident." When Virginia Woolf visited Hardy forty years later, shortly before his death, she told hm that she could not put his novel down.

2/16/1751

Gray, Hardy, RusticityOn this day in 1751, Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was published. Gray was a reclusive gentleman-poet and he did not write many poems, but this tribute to the humble life brought him immediate fame and the offer of the poet laureateship; it also became the most reprinted poem of the 18th century, one which Thomas Hardy would love and borrow from for his title, "Far From the Madding Crowd."

6/27/1878

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall, LausanneThe moment at which Edward Gibbon completed The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -- just before midnight, June 27, 1787, in the small summer-house in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland -- is described in detail in his memoirs The book had been almost 15 years in the making -- 6 volumes, 1.5 million words, 8000 footnotes -- and the author did not want to let "the hour of my final deliverance" go unmarked. . . .

11/1/1895

Judging Jude and Hardyread it now!On this day in 1895 Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was published. Early critics called it "Jude the Obscene," and dubbed its author "Hardy the Degenerate." Dismayed by such criticism, and mindful of what had been said about his earlier books, Hardy thereafter wrote only poetry: "If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone."

12/31/1906

New Year's Poetry: Thomas Hardy, Sylvia PlathThis edition of New Year's Eve poetry features two poems, Thomas Hardy's "New Year's Eve" and Sylvia Plath's "New Year on Dartmoor." Beneath the difference in style and perspective -- Hardy's poem was written when he was approaching seventy, Plath's some thirteen months before her suicide at the age of thirty -- is the same pause over the mysteriousness of the moment.

"In his novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy deals with issues of morality in two fundamental ways; one is the relativity of moral values - their variation according to time and place - the other is the opposition between man-made laws and Nature."

Thomas Hardy Resource LibraryOffers a large selection of electronic texts, pictures, audio clips, maps, links, articles, and a chrology of events. Includes links to reviews of recent Hardy scholarship, literary criticism and analysis, and information about film adaptations of the author's works.

Thomas Hardy's WorldThis website was produced by the participants in Hardy seminars taught at three colleges in the United States. It offers course syllabi, a bibliography, chronology of events in the author's life, student impressions of Hardy's works, and student essays on a variety of subjects including class, education, marriage, religion, gender issues, folklore, and the influence of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

"In the later years of his life, Hardy felt that his faith in Christianity had been badly shaken by what he experienced and learned from the new scientific advancements in his century. He became an agnostic; however, he continued his search for the purpose and meaning of human existence. He longed to discover some divine being or Creator, but his acceptance of scientific theories like Charles Darwin's weakened his faith and strengthened his spiritual doubt."